Is West Asia
Facing its Mayan Moment?
| by K. Gajendra
Singh
( December 18,
2012, New Delhi, Sri Lanka Guardian) Modern doomsayers are predicting Friday,
Dec. 21, 2012 as the end of the world as we know it, because the Maya calendar
says so. The Maya calendar abruptly ends on Friday, Dec. 21, 2012.
Peter Dunham, an
archaeologist in the department of anthropology at Cleveland State University
who teaches “Ancient Mysteries” says “It just means it’s time to make a new
calendar.” He adds “a major cycle ends on Dec. 21, but again, it’s a cycle.
When one cycle ends, a new one begins. The Maya only mentioned the year 2012 twice
and in neither case do they mention the end of the world.”
With the latest
change of stand taken by Russia on its solid support to Syrian President Bashar
Assad (later somewhat retracted), it appears like the Mayan moment for him.
But the
situation in West Asia and North Africa and elsewhere will not unfold as US led
NATO and Riyadh and Doha financed GCC countries hope and wish. The fires of
resistance and for freedom from authoritarian rulers in the Gulf oligarchies,
the main financiers earlier of the 1980s Jihad in Afghanistan, which has
destroyed south west Asia and now the greater Middle East, will blowback. Shia
majority Bahrainis want freedom from its Sunni ruler. There is unrest not only
in oil rich Shia regions of the Saudi Kingdom, but growing general resentment
among young unemployed and under employed Sunni citizens of Saudi Arabia
against the absolute rule of Saudi princes oligarchy.
A new calendar
has begun, as it had after the rebuff of the Ottoman arms from the Gates of
Vienna in end 16 century. Following Ottoman Empire’s decline and withdrawal
from Maghreb, European powers colonized Algeria, Tunisia, Libya and Egypt
beginning in 19 century.
The borders of
West Asia, part of Ottoman Sultan Caliph’s domains, were drawn by the
victorious Western European powers England and France after the defeat of the
Ottoman armies in WWI. Known as greater Syria, that historical entity became
divided into Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Occupied West bank territories and Gaza.
It seems that whatever remains of the historical Syria, will be further divided
into Sunni, Alawite, Christian and Kurdish and other zones of conflict. The
Shia Sunni conflicts and even wars ignited and encouraged by the West could
rage and engulf most people in the region.
The borders in
West Asia perhaps including Turkey which has 20% Kurdish population and 15%
Alevi (Shia) population will be redrawn .Already in Iraq following the US led
illegal invasion and occupation since 2003 and de facto creation of autonomous
Iraqi Kurdistan after the 1991 war against Saddam Hussain’s occupation of
Kuwait (which gave oxygen to Kurdish resistance in south east Turkey), the
state is now divided into 3 parts. The US has been caught in a quagmire by the
resistances in Iraq, where in the words of US Col Murtha the US army has been
broken. Hence the reluctance to place GI boots in Libya (the virus of terrorism
and Islamic obscurantism has now spread south of Libya) elsewhere. In the
ultimate Western retreat from Eastern lands, the Iraqi sacrifice will compare
with that of the Soviet Union’s resistance in WWII, which destroyed 80% of the
Nazi military machine. The Yanks and the Brits just took the credit with
propaganda films.
US led Western
retreat and downsizing is becoming apparent, once with its military lillipods
extending even into central Asia right up to China’s borders, after the
collapse of USSR. Let us see how US withdraws its heavy military hardware from
Afghanistan and even Iraq. Remember the sorry state of Soviet bases and its
troops and citizens in it’s near abroad after the collapse of USSR.
While it is not
easy to predict when it will take place but it might be matter of year or so or
even less. Who had predicted the collapse of USSR so quickly. Now because of
its obsession of wars and military expenditure, US is bankrupt as are most EU
nations. Many centuries long warfare between Roman/Byzantine empires and the
Persian empires had exhausted them both making the new power of Islam conquer
territories from Morocco to the borders of China.
As and when West
declines and withdraws, the main beneficiaries will be Islamic regimes and
certainly not in love with the West for all their colonization, exploitation
and crimes of centuries of Western domination. It should be admitted that the
way the situation evolves and explodes in Syria is of prime importance for the
future of the region and the world.
